From Intego, the company who first blogged about this malware (emphasis mine):

This threat may run on Leopard 10.5, but it has a tendency to crash. It does not run on the new Mountain Lion 10.8.

Also...

This threat has not yet been found in the wild, and so far there is no indication that this Trojan has infected users

You're right to imply that Mountain Lion users shouldn't get too cocky, but in this particular case, according to this antivirus vendor, the malware hasn't even been found in the wild—and even if it had, it doesn't run on Mountain Lion.

Posted
by
samzenpuson Monday September 26, 2011 @08:47AM
from the all-your-passwords-are-belong-to-me dept.

daria42 writes "Thought your Mac was secure running Apple's latest operating system? Think again. Turns out that in some respects Lion is actually less secure than previous version of Mac OS X, due to some permission-tweaking by Apple that has opened up a way for an attacker to crack your password on your Lion box. The flaw was discovered by an Australian researcher who has previously published a guide to cracking Mac OS X passwords. Sounds like Apple had better get a patch out for this."

the JoshMeister writes: "On Friday, Apple released Security Update 2011-005 for only Mac OS X v10.7 Lion and v10.6 Snow Leopard, both of which can only run on Intel-based Macs. This officially and quietly cuts off all users of G4 and G5-based Macs (some of which Apple was still selling less than 5 years ago) from ever receiving OS security updates again. Many Mac users are now left stranded with perfectly good hardware and an insecure operating system, and since Apple has neglected to warn users of Leopard and previous versions of Mac OS about the lack of updates, most of them will never know there is a problem."Link to Original Source

According to Engadget, Best Buy won't offer discounts in U.S. stores. However, HP is supposedly offering refunds to those who paid the full $400. From the Engadget piece:

Well, it looks like American Best Buys won't be enjoying the same liquidation sale as our neighbors to the north. A couple of tipsters have reported that the big box electronics retailer has pulled the webOS tablets from its shelves and is shipping them back to HP. The slates have also disappeared from Best Buy's website...Don't get upset if you already plunked down $400 for 10-inches of webOS goodness -- HP will refund you the difference. Call up the company or the retail partner you purchased it from, and ask. Just be prepared to sit on hold with all the rest of the folks trying to get their cash back.

* A guy who used a pseudonym on Google+ ("Thomas Monopoly") claims to have lost his entire account including "approximately 7 years of correspondence, over 4,800 photographs and videos, my Google Voice messages, over 500 articles saved to my Google Reader account for scholarship purposes all of my bookmarks, having used Google bookmarks my Docs account with shared documents and backups of inventory files my own personal calendar of doctors appointments, meetings, and various other dates collaborative calendars, of which I was the creator and of which several man hours were put into creating, community calendars my saved maps and travel history medical records and a variety of very important notes [and] My website, a blogger account for which I purchased the domain through Google and designed myself": http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/why-you-shouldnt-trust-google-or-any-cloud-service-with-your-data/13860

* Daynah (a Senior Editor at Beatweek Magazine and a blogger at Cali Lewis' GeekBeat.TV) was suspended from Google+ on Saturday, presumably because her Google+ name was "Daynah.net" (she never shares her last name online due to privacy and safety concerns). I believe it was just her Google+ account that got suspended, not her e-mail or access to other services. Her profile is still suspended as of when I'm posting this.

* I was suspended from Google+ on Friday, June 15th through Wednesday, June 20th, presumably because my Google+ name was "the JoshMeister" (which is how I'm known to almost all of my friends and followers online, on my podcasts which have been downloaded over a million times, including at my employment at MacTech Magazine as the Podcast Producer and Host). I tried changing my name to my first and last name with the JoshMeister in parenthesis after it, but that was also rejected, so ultimately I had to settle for using just my real first and last name. Unfortunately, my name is fairly common, and there are already several people with that name on Google+, making it significantly more difficult for people to find and recognize me or + mention me. I did not lose access to Google services other than Google+ and Google Buzz, although I did have to log in again to my e-mail and other services because Google claimed there had been "suspicious activity" (although I confirmed that nobody had accessed my account other than me). More of my story: https://plus.google.com/114936727752666468558/posts/5nHEHFsWCTx

* Some people such as "Soulja Boy" (a recording artist) and "Violet Blue" (the author of the linked ZDNet article) get special treatment and have not been suspended for using their pseudonyms on Google+

* "Die Ennomane" (die means "the" in German) was suspended but then was allowed to keep the pseudonym after German media coverage

* Google has turned a blind eye to several Lady Gaga impersonators (as the linked ZDNet article also points out)

* You can type various words into the "Find people" search bar and get results that are obviously not people's real names; start typing any of the following or think of other things to try: "the joker", "idiot", "stupid", "loser", "crap", "doctor", "rapper", "city", "google", "twitter", "facebook", "coca cola" (as mentioned in the ZDNet article), etc.

* Several people have gotten away with violating Google's policy against including a title (e.g. "Dr.") at the beginning of one's name (including but not limited to "Dr. Kiki Sanford" aka Kirsten Sanford)

Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Tuesday April 20, 2010 @09:35AM
from the it's-all-just-a-matter-of-history-repeating dept.

Keith found an interesting story telling a bit about how Steve Jobs operates. It involves small teams of young engineers willing to work 90-hour weeks in total secrecy, and a complete willingness to throw away bad ideas without flowery language. The iPad is surprisingly similar to the Mac."

Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday March 18, 2010 @10:55AM
from the self-sustaining dept.

MrShaggy writes "Credit Suisse made headlines this summer when it estimated that YouTube was costing Google a half a billion dollars in 2009 as it streamed 75 billion videos. But a new report from Arbor Networks suggests that even though Google is approaching 10 percent of the net's traffic, it's got so much fiber optic cable it is simply trading traffic, with no payment involved, with the net's largest ISPs. 'I think Google's transit costs are close to zero,' said Craig Labovitz, the chief scientist for Arbor Networks and a longtime internet researcher. Arbor Networks, which sells network monitoring equipment used by about 70 percent of the net's ISPs, likely knows more about the net's ebbs and flows than anyone outside of the National Security Agency."

Although I'm familiar with Thawte, I hadn't heard of its "Web of Trust" prior to this article. However, there's a popular browser add-on with the same name, so I thought I should point that out to avoid any confusion, especially since both products are related to Internet security in some way.

Web of Trust is also the name of a Firefox and Internet Explorer plug-in from a company called WOT Services Ltd. (until recently known as Against Intuition Inc.). It helps protect users from harmful Web sites and puts safety rating badges in search results on Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and other search engines, similar to McAfee SiteAdvisor and Symantec's Norton Safe Web (although in my experience, WOT is much more effective). This completely unrelated Web of Trust is not being killed off.

the JoshMeister writes: "Non-savvy Web users are often tricked by fake security alerts and fake antivirus scams. But surely a more seasoned individual, say for example a Microsoft escalated support representative, wouldn't be fooled by such a scheme. Or would they?"Link to Original Source

the JoshMeister writes: "Mac antivirus company Intego broke the story this morning that Apple is apparently including antivirus functionality in its upcoming operating system, Snow Leopard. But which antivirus engine is Apple using? Security researcher Joshua Long discusses the likely candidates."Link to Original Source

It would appear that the parent poster has never heard of meconium aspiration syndrome (MAS). Apparently, in 5 to 20 percent of all births, meconium passes into the amniotic fluid (meconium is the tar-like, sterile stool that an infant passes prior to passing feces). So neither the grandparent poster nor the parent poster were entirely correct; non-sterile feces doesn't float around in the womb for 3 months, but sterile meconium does often pass in utero and can be harmful to the infant if inhaled (or even fatal, in one case I'm aware of).